Parentheticals

Alison and the kids were happy to get back to the pool to resume their swimming lessons during the first half of the week. Sara and Timmy are making good progress, and Gideon likes the water as long as he has a full body bathing suit. Rea is still swimming like a fish. For Rea's date on Wednesday we had cake and watched an episode of My Little Ponies. Becky's family was in in springville for the second half of the week, so Alison and the Kids drive down there daily to visit them. Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig drove up to visit, and so they got to see them too. Rea particularly liked a magic show that they saw at the library. They also went to the Bean Museum in Provo and went to the splash pad every day. Gideon started crawling for real this week. He can only army crawl, but that is way more locomotion than he has done before. He also has gotten up on all fours, and flopped forward - which is fairly effective when he wants to move forward a little bit. We are expectin...

During the first half of this week, Alison was sick for most of the time, which prevented them from doing as many things as they normally do. The kids missed the pool the most. Mike went to his design guild on Tuesday and played Grab the Loot. It went well, and he got a lot of good ideas. On Friday Mike was told that his game was chosen as the winner of the Button Shy Wallet Game Design contest. His game ( The Perfect Moment ) is now being considered for publication by Button Shy Games. Winning a contest with one of his games has been a long term goal for Mike, so he is really excited about this. After learning this, Mike decided to bring home sushi for dinner. The mood felt very celebratory. On Saturday we celebrated Timmy's third birthday. He loved all of his presents, and spent much of the day playing with them. When we got bored of watching this, we told him to bring his toys to go strawberry picking. The three oldest family members picked pretty much the whole time and...

On Tuesday Mike had a work team building where he painted a picture. It was pretty fun. He probably wouldn't buy paints to paint on his own, but he found painting to be enjoyable. Tuesday we had Mike's friend Lauren and his family come over for dinner. It was a fun challenge to cook for someone on a low FODMAPs diet, which their oldest son is on. Lauren is working with a startup on the side, programming an app for physical therapists, and invited Mike to join him. Mike is not quite ready to give his hobby time over to programming for free, but he did get an email this week from BYU-I asking if he would be interested in part-time work as a online adjunct professor, and he filled out the application. He and Alison both love teaching, and this would be an ideal retirement job for him if it works out, he likes it, and he could teach a couple of classes every semester. Mike also joined another game design contest this week- this time he is making a game for kids out of parts th...

Monday was a holiday! Mike had Memorial Day off work, and we had our first barbecue of the season, and the barbecue didn't even blow up or light on fire or anything! Mike made hamburger patties with blue cheese in them, which were great; we also had vegetable skewers with bell pepper, zucchini, and mushrooms in a soy sauce and pineapple juice marinade, which Alison (and everyone) loved, and watermelon, and hot dogs for the kids. Then we went to the play "Pirates of the Caribeener" at the Off Broadway Theater. The kids were ecstatic; they love the OBT plays. They enjoyed this one; Rea might have understood some of the jokes, but probably not because she's never seen Pirates of the Caribbean or Sponge Bob, which was the other reference they pulled in. But they all enjoyed the story and the singing and dancing anyway. Gideon didn't even scream, even though he was obviously very tired but unable to sleep in the noise. Best baby ever! On Tuesday, we went to Forest ...